Commuters make alternate travel plans

• 
• 

With a possible Long Island Rail Road strike a few days away, Baldwin residents are preparing for what could be longer commutes — and headaches.

Chris Loughlin, who works at an advertising agency in Midtown Manhattan, said he hasn’t made a decision on how he would get to work in the event of a strike, but he does have a few options. Each option, however, he added, would complicate his commute. “It’s either I wake up and leave the house by 4:30 and drive into the city,” he said, “take the bus to Jamaica and catch the A train, or sleep at my friends’ place in Astoria [Queens].”

Loughlin was waiting to hear from his company’s management to see whether he would have the option to work from home, but he expected that to be an option for at least a couple of days a week.

Fellow commuter Howard Gilbert, the director of licensing at a publishing company in downtown Manhattan, said he was planning to work as normal in the event of a strike, but to do so from his Baldwin home. “I’ll most likely just telecommute from home,” he said. “That’s my main plan. It depends how long the strike is.”

In his line of work, Gilbert said, he can work from anywhere, as long as he has a laptop and an Internet connection. He expects most people from his company who live on Long Island to do the same. In the event that there’s an important meeting or conference he must attend, he said, he would have to find a way into Manhattan. “If I had to come in,” he said, “I’d drive to Brooklyn and take the subway from there. That’s my alternative.”

Baldwin Civic Association President David Viana said that residents, commuters and business owners alike would be negatively impacted by a strike, adding that “daily riders would now have to spend more time away from home as they find other ways to get to work or school.”